Maggie Kilgour – författare

Milton and the Metamorphosis of Ovid contributes to our understanding of the Roman poet Ovid, the Renaissance writer Milton, and more broadly the transmission and transformation of classical traditions through history. It examines the ways in which Milton drew on Ovid's oeuvre, as well as the long tradition of reception that had begun with Ovid himself, and argues that Ovid's revision of the past, and especially his relation to Virgil, gave Renaissance writers a model for their own transformation of classical works. Throughout his career Milton thinks through and with Ovid, whose stories and figures inform his exploration of the limits and possibilities of creativity, change, and freedom.Examining this specific relation between two very individual and different authors, Kilgour also explores the forms and meaning of creative imitation. Intertextuality was not only central to the two writers' poetic practices but helped shape their visions of the world. While many critics seek to establish how Milton read Ovid, Kilgour debates the broader question of why does considering how Milton read Ovid matter? How do our readings of this relation change our understanding of both Milton and Ovid; and does it tell us about how traditions are changed and remade through time?

A defence of the importance of poetry that studies one of the greatest poets of the English tradition: John Milton.The Literary Agenda is a series of short polemical monographs about the importance of literature and of reading in the wider world and about the state of literary education inside schools and universities. The category of 'the literary' has always been contentious. What is clear, however, is how increasingly it is dismissed or is unrecognised as a way of thinking or an arena for thought. It is sceptically challenged from within, for example, by the sometimes rival claims of cultural history, contextualized explanation, or media studies. It is shaken from without by even greater pressures: by economic exigency and the severe social attitudes that can follow from it; by technological change that may leave the traditional forms of serious human communication looking merely antiquated. For just these reasons this is the right time for renewal, to start reinvigorated work into the meaning and value of literary reading.Why would anyone read John Milton today? To many, poetry in general is an irrelevant and even irresponsible luxury that we cannot afford in a time of environmental and social crisis. The work of a seventeenth-century 'Puritan' might seem especially obscure and out of touch with our needs. But this book argues that Milton offers us one of the most powerful arguments for the importance of poetry today, both representing in his poetry and demonstrating through his own life, the transformative and sustaining force of the human imagination even in times of greatest upheaval. Writing out of his own experience of loss and disappointment, he insists that poetry is a form of knowledge, a way of seeing and understanding the world around us, others, and indeed ourselves. He uses the resources of poetry--its language, imagery, and forms--to challenge and shake us up, making us think in unfamiliar ways and expanding our imagination and our sense of the possibilities in our lives. Milton insists that poetry gives us knowledge of truths we otherwise would never apprehend; it enriches the experience of both writers and readers and makes us creative and fully realized human beings.

Milton and the Metamorphosis of Ovid contributes to our understanding of the Roman poet Ovid, the Renaissance writer Milton, and more broadly the transmission and transformation of classical traditions through history. It examines the ways in which Milton drew on Ovid's oeuvre, as well as the long tradition of reception that had begun with Ovid himself, and argues that Ovid's revision of the past, and especially his relation to Virgil, gave Renaissance writers a model for their own transformation of classical works. Throughout his career Milton thinks through and with Ovid, whose stories and figures inform his exploration of the limits and possibilities of creativity, change, and freedom. Examining this specific relation between two very individual and different authors, Kilgour also explores the forms and meaning of creative imitation. Intertextuality was not only central to the two writers' poetic practices but helped shape their visions of the world. While many critics seek to establish how Milton read Ovid, Kilgour debates the broader question of why does considering how Milton read Ovid matter? How do our readings of this relation change our understanding of both Milton and Ovid; and does it tell us about how traditions are changed and remade through time? Bringing together new work on Milton, Ovid, and the reception of classical literature, this volume aims to show how the past both transforms and is transformed by the present.

One of the central images conjured up by the gothic novel is that of a shadowy spectre slowly rising from a mysterious abyss. In The Rise of the Gothic Novel, Maggie Kilgour argues that the ghost of the gothic is now resurrected in the critical methodologies which investigate it for the revelation of buried cultural secrets. In this cogent analysis of the rise and fall of the gothic as a popular form, Kilgour juxtaposes the writings of William Godwin with Mary Wollstonecraft, and Ann Radcliffe with Matthew Lewis. She concludes with a close reading of the quintessential gothic novel, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. An impressive and highly original study, The Rise of the Gothic Novel is an invaluable contribution to the continuing literary debates which surround this influential genre.

One of the central images conjured up by the gothic novel is that of a shadowy spectre slowly rising from a mysterious abyss. In The Rise of the Gothic Novel, Maggie Kilgour argues that the ghost of the gothic is now resurrected in the critical methodologies which investigate it for the revelation of buried cultural secrets.In this cogent analysis of the rise and fall of the gothic as a popular form, Kilgour juxtaposes the writings of William Godwin with Mary Wollstonecraft, and Ann Radcliffe with Matthew Lewis. She concludes with a close reading of the quintessential gothic novel, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.An impressive and highly original study, The Rise of the Gothic Novel is an invaluable contribution to the continuing literary debates which surround this influential genre.

Focusing on such metaphors as communion and cannibalism in a wide range of Western literary works, Maggie Kilgour examines the opposition between outside and inside and the strategies of incorporation by which it is transcended. This opposition is basic to literature in that it underlies other polarities such as those between form and content, the literal and metaphorical, source and model. Kilgour demonstrates the usefulness of incorporation as a subsuming metaphor that describes the construction and then the dissolution of opposites or separate identities in a text: the distinction between outside and inside, essentially that of eater and eaten, is both absolute and unreciprocal and yet fades in the process of ingestion--as suggested in the saying "you are what you eat.". Kilgour explores here a fable of identity central to Western thought that represents duality as the result of a fall from a primal symbiotic unity to which men have longed to return. However, while incorporation can be desired as the end of alienation, it can also be feared as a form of regression through which individual identity is lost.Beginning with the works of Homer, Ovid, Augustine, and Dante, Kilgour traces the ambivalent attitude toward incorporation throughout Western literature. She examines the Eucharist as a model for internalization in Renaissance texts, addresses the incorporation of past material in the nineteenth century, and concludes with a discussion of the role of incorporation in cultural theory today. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Focusing on such metaphors as communion and cannibalism in a wide range of Western literary works, Maggie Kilgour examines the opposition between outside and inside and the strategies of incorporation by which it is transcended. This opposition is basic to literature in that it underlies other polarities such as those between form and content, the literal and metaphorical, source and model. Kilgour demonstrates the usefulness of incorporation as a subsuming metaphor that describes the construction and then the dissolution of opposites or separate identities in a text: the distinction between outside and inside, essentially that of eater and eaten, is both absolute and unreciprocal and yet fades in the process of ingestion--as suggested in the saying "you are what you eat.". Kilgour explores here a fable of identity central to Western thought that represents duality as the result of a fall from a primal symbiotic unity to which men have longed to return. However, while incorporation can be desired as the end of alienation, it can also be feared as a form of regression through which individual identity is lost.Beginning with the works of Homer, Ovid, Augustine, and Dante, Kilgour traces the ambivalent attitude toward incorporation throughout Western literature. She examines the Eucharist as a model for internalization in Renaissance texts, addresses the incorporation of past material in the nineteenth century, and concludes with a discussion of the role of incorporation in cultural theory today. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.